1. Technical Field
Embodiments described herein relate to systems and methods for implementing power supply regulation in semiconductor devices. More particularly, the embodiments described herein relate to semiconductor devices with integrated passive devices for voltage regulation.
2. Description of Related Art
Power delivery along with power saving are increasingly factoring into integrated circuit device performance scaling for system on a chip (SoC) devices, central processing units (CPUs), and graphical processing units (GPUs). Delivering power more quickly to a device can increase the speed and power of the device while saving power by reducing losses during power transitions (e.g., powering on/off of the device). Further performance scaling may be limited without more efficient power delivery and power saving systems or techniques being developed. Thus, methods and systems for the inclusion of voltage regulation components (e.g., passive devices such as inductors and/or capacitors) on or near the integrated circuit die are being developed for further performance scaling.
One method of integrating voltage regulation on an integrated circuit die that has been developed is forming voltage regulation components on the die during processing used to make the die (e.g., forming inductors and capacitors during CMOS processing used to form the integrated circuit). Forming inductors and capacitors during CMOS processing, however, requires a complex process that can add cost, additional process time, require more masks, and/or more equipment. Because of the complexity involved in forming the inductors and capacitors on the integrated circuit die during the CMOS process, the yield loss in such integrated circuit die may be high, which leads to additional manufacturing time and cost. Additionally, because the inductors and capacitors are formed during the CMOS process, the specifications of the inductors and capacitors are limited by the CMOS process parameters.
Another method developed for inclusion of voltage regulation components on or near the integrated circuit die is providing discrete inductors and capacitors on-package with the integrated circuit die. Providing the inductors and capacitors on-package, however, may require large amounts of real estate space for the components, involve difficult physical routing, and be electrically inefficient with electrical losses.